Seventh Day Baptists

Seventh Day Baptists are Baptists who observe the Sabbath in the seventh day of the week, Saturday, as a holy day to God. They adopt a theology common to Baptists, profess the Bible as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, perform the baptism of believers by immersion, and believe in the autonomy of the local church. They profess a statement of faith instituted on fundamental precepts of belief. Seventh Day Baptists rest on Saturday as a sign of obedience in a covenant relationship with God and not as a condition of salvation.

Most Christians and churches in history made Sunday their principal day of rest instead of Saturday. Nevertheless, there are countless accounts in the history of Christians who resisted that innovation and preserved the seventh day of the week as a day of rest and worship to God as instituted by God in the creation of the world, affirmed as a fourth commandment and reaffirmed in the teaching and example of Jesus and the Apostles. There are reports of Sabbath keeping in different parts of the world. In England, the first Baptists to keep the seventh day only appears in middle of the 17th century, and it was not the mainstream belief.

Seventh Day Baptists consist of churches all over the world, with over 520 churches and at least 45,000 members. Many have constant interaction among themselves through conferences in each country and through the Seventh Day Baptist World Federation. Other groups are independent. In general, federations maintain good relations with other Baptist churches and Protestant denominations as well as establishing links with other Christian institutions and unions worldwide.

English Baptists date back to the early 17th century Puritan Nonconformism, in which many did not conform to the Church of England and formed other churches. Among these congregations were the Gainsborough church whose leaders were John Smyth and Thomas Helwys. In 1608, they left England in exile and went to the Netherlands. Soon, the congregation concluded that infants should not be baptized because of the lack of biblical and apostolical support. The exiled English church in Amsterdam became what is considered the first Baptist church. Two years later, Helwys expelled Smyth and returned with some of the supporters to England, reestablishing the church in London. From there, Baptist practices and teachings spread throughout the country. However, they observed the Sabbath in the first day of the week.

The beginning of the observance of the Sabbath on the seventh day of the week in England caused the occurrence of well-known debates on the subject to arise. These started in London, where one of the "Seventh-Day Men", a tailor and self-taught Bible student called Hamlet Jackson, converted a Minister couple, John & Dorothy Traske, to the observance of the seventh day (Saturday). In 1614, John Traske ordained Hamlet and three other Seventh-Day Men to proclaim their discoveries and anoint the sick. In 1616 John and Dorothy were arrested but Hamlet's Ministry was able to establish the Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church in London in 1617.

John Traske was accused of writing two scandalous letters to the king and sentenced by the authorities to prison on 19 June 1618, for "…aspiring to be the leader of a Jewish faction". After a year in prison, John Traske recanted, was released and tried to divert his followers from this and other doctrines he preached. However, Dorothy Traske did not deny her convictions and remained in prison for 25 years. After these, other groups also kept and declared Sabbath observance, which led to retaliation by the political and ecclesiastical authorities of the time such as when Theophilus Brabourne was imprisoned for 18 months and threatened with the loss of his ears for publishing his "Discourse on the Sabbath" in 1628.

When Christmas, Easter and Pentecost were banned in 1643/4 leading to a number of riots, a variety of "Independent" churches sprang up supporting the Seventh-Day Baptists' right to dissent. Then in 1645 Henry Jessey converted into a Seventh Day Baptist arguing in 1647 that the seventh-day was "[Christ's] Sabbath which he blessed and sanctified". Subsequently the new Independent churches began to be tolerated and enjoyed relative religious and political freedom from 1649 under the republican rule of the Commonwealth of England. With this newfound freedom, England's first Seventh Day Baptist Church became secure. In 1650, Brabourne's pupil, James Ockford, published in London the book The Doctrine of the Fourth Commandment, Deformed by Popery, Reformed & Restored to its Primitive Purity, which was the first writings of a Baptist defending Seventh-day Sabbath observance, when the overwhelming majority of Baptists in England observed the Sabbath on Sunday. The book generated such a nuisance that the mayor of Salisbury, the city where Ockford lived, asked the president of Parliament for guidance on how to handle the work; a parliamentary committee determined that all copies should be burned without giving the opportunity for James Ockford to defend them. Only one copy has escaped, kept today in a library in Oxford.

The first official Seventh Day Baptist service in London took place at the Mill Yard Church in 1651, led by Peter Chamberlen. M.D. "the Third". The first records of church activities were destroyed in a fire; the second record book is in possession of the Seventh Day Baptist Historical Library and Archives and begins in 1673. The first pastor to be officially considered responsible for the congregation was William Saller, who among other activities, wrote eleven books and a booklet, in addition to an appeal to magistrates reporting concern over laws imposing rest on Sunday. The local church continues its activities to this day under the name of Mill Yard Seventh Day Baptist Church.